The Woman Who Wanted To Be Funny is at the getting-to-know-everyone stage which I hope you enjoy reading. I did have a subplot of badly behaved old men, but they are now demanding a whole novel of their own and Katie our would-be funny woman is not arguing—she has too much to say. She has even refused the Bag Lady entry…
I thought you might like to get to know her better. I am relying on the good old days when I worked in a hotel and coughed like a miner on account of everyone smoking inside. My memory is fuzzy because that is when I discovered whisky and hangovers, but still, I think I can remember enough to give Katie a background worth a few chapters. Here is a taster.
Kilmartin Hotel
Winter 1980
I was working in a bar when I first met Pete, I had just turned twenty with no idea what to do and driving my parents crazy. They thought I was wasting my time working in a dead-end job, and I, going nowhere avoided them like the plague. I had no idea what I wanted to do, well, apart from making people laugh, although I don’t remember anyone finding me funny.
My parents had succeeded in the sort of jobs that allowed them to retire in their fifties, play bowls, and go on cruises and my lack of motivation or ‘procrastination’ was a great source of nagging for Mum and Dad. I was their only daughter, and was considered a lackluster ‘wild’ card———my parents loved a game of cards.
My older brother worked in banking and had a large car to prove it, and my younger brother did things in advertising, while I had left school with mediocre ‘C’s and a ‘could try harder’ comments.
My parents lived outside Glasgow. They thought I was mad to move to a small country pub in Argyll and work for a woman who yelled a lot. I never told them I did it to get away from them——the bonus being I worked on Christmas Day avoiding family meet-ups, and “look how successful I am” presents.
Meeting Pete changed all that.
He had just moved to the area and had yet to discover cricket. He was sitting by the fire inches from the bar with his two mates, Brian and Alex, and their two girlfriends, and I working behind the bar spied him straight away——and assumed he was single.
He was long, lanky, and laughed all the time. As soon as his pint was finished I dived over to lift his glass…and caught his warm eyes. I liked his face immediately, in fact, I liked everything about him, from his lanky hair to his knackered-looking boots.
“Another?” I said.
“Why not?” He answered. “And we’ll have the menu while we’re at it.”
I flashed him another smile along with the menu and he flashed one back, my heart skipped and I was just thinking of something witty to say when his girlfriend appeared, sat beside him and he with a warm look her way slid his arm around her shoulder.
Pissed off doesn’t begin to describe how I felt. I mean it’s not often you see a man like him in a small town. I could have sworn our eyes met…but then I realized he did that ‘thing with his eyes’ to everyone.
I watched, polishing glasses as they ordered starters, mains, and more drinks, lighting up fags like there was no tomorrow…
I even remember what they had, egg mayonnaise, and prawn cocktails for starters, followed by steaks and chips. It was back in the days when people smoked not only inside, but at the table, in between courses, filling up the ashtrays like somehow smoking made the food taste better. There were ashtrays on every table, scattered across the bar, and at the end of a shift, after all the glasses were polished, the beer trays emptied and cleaned, the sink would be full of them, soaking and stinking out the bar with that ash smell.
His girlfriend went by the name of Janet. She had red curly hair, freckles, and legs like a spider. She was what my mother would call plain and yet there she was entertaining all with the wit of Jo Brand. Pete couldn’t get enough of her.
I never saw him again for about a year after that until he appeared for a work Christmas do, Pete worked for a local estate and all the workers were there with their partners——— apart that is for Pete.
It was Friday night, and the bar was heaving.
Jock and Hamish were playing in the ‘back’ bar. They, dressed in a flat cap and jacket get up, like a scene from “The Last Of The Summer Wine’ were as ancient as the dark wooden decor of the pub. Jock played the fiddle and Hamish the accordion and every Friday night they with a half and a half pint and a smoking woodbine by their side played the same set.
The Christmas ‘do’ crowd filled the dining room. They, tucking into roast turkey with all the trimmings, smoked so much the dining room was as foggy as a ‘Sherlock Holmes’ scene, escaping into the hallway whenever the door swished open.
I (doing my best not to cough) was dolling out the turkey stuffing when Pete stretching for the cranberry sauce caught my eye, “don’t I know you,” he smiled, doing that eye thing.
I almost skipped back to the kitchen, slid dishes into the sink, and wondered…hoped, then after a quick check in the loo mirror headed back into the dining room…praying for more empty plates to collect.
Jock and Hamish had just finished their sandwiches and tea break and were warming up for their second ‘Scottish’ set when the ‘do’ crowd spilled into the back bar for a session. Tam a local Shepard extracted a set of spoons from his pocket and with a conductor-like wave, and a drunken wobble he clicked a rhythm along his thigh, and soon the tiny back bar was full of folk, ‘partner—dancing’ the ‘gay what ever’ around the tables and chairs——apart from Pete.
Pete seemed to catch my eye every time I passed, even passing a few empty glasses my way. I have never cleared up so fast in my life, I raced around like a chook-without-a-, -head desperate to finish so I could get a chance to sit by him before the pub shut.
I can’t remember when Jock and Hamish left or when the doors were locked, or who produced the guitar. But soon the owner/chef was behind the bar serving rounds, while we were singing ‘American Pie’ until we got to the part where the words were forgotten….
I remember Pete catching my eye, and patting the seat beside him. The guitar player had moved onto Dolly Parton songs by then and the crowd was so loud we had to sit close to hear each other. And while ‘Islands In The Stream” was killed by a bunch of drunks, Pete talked of Karen; and I gestured I couldn’t hear so he’d move closer.
Even now when I smell Brut aftershave I think of that night, lost in intimate talking and eye gazing while others partied.
“She wants to be a yoga teacher” he shouted.
A drunk staggered by his pint glass half full, tidal waving from side to side almost spilling over the sides.
“What?” I shouted back.
“Yoga” he leant closer.
Back then yoga performed in long-sleeved leotards and tights on daytime TV was considered as weird as vegetarianism, my parents claimed, it ‘was the reason the Beatles turned from cleaned-cut young men to hippies and split up.’
I, more of a Rolling Stones fan couldn’t give a toss.
“She has gone to India to study it,” said Pete.
I pictured her in a daytime TV leotard…
“She met a guru from Holland.”
I felt a surge of hope and with my best/cutest ‘Goldie Hawn’ look said, “A Dutchman, in India?”
Pete nodded.
“Yoga is as foreign to me as garlic, and Gaelic,” I said———and he laughed!
He brought me a drink after that and a packet of crisps and as I tried not to stuff my face in front of him, he showed me pictures of her doing the splits outside the Taj Mahal (no leotard).
He said she had to get up at the crack of dawn to get there before the crowds. And before I could nod an ‘I see’. He shouted “Yoga not all it cracked up to be,” sparking a few looks from the crowd who had now moved on to Kenny Rodger’s The Gambler.”
“Flexible in the thighs doesn’t mean a flexible mind”, he whispered right into my ear.
I looked at him his face inches from mine, crisps as forgotten as a day-old pizza…
Turns out her relationship with the Dutch guru was more than just a few shared downward dogs.
Show Me The Funny Promo
Get you laughing tackle around these free funny book
Here is me being interviewed for a festival I will be part of in April this year. It’s held in Tarbet, Argyll Scotland and I be doing a bit of storytelling from my books and a bit of belly dancing.
I hope you enjoy the interview despite the internet cutting out a few times.
until next time happy reading